With God, nothing is impossible

Voices of Religion

Here is a riddle for you. Do not feel bad if you don’t get it right off, because many college students from Stanford didn’t either, although a large number of kindergarten students did.

What is greater than God,

More evil than the devil;

The poor have it,

The rich need it,

And if you eat it, you will die?

I read of an English professor who wrote the words, “woman without her man is nothing” on the board and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.

The men wrote, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” The women wrote, “Woman! Without her, man is nothing.”

I imagine there was quite a debate in that English classroom after that. Maybe Shakespeare would comment, “Much ado about nothing.”

Perhaps the greatest reference to “nothing” ( the answer to the riddle) is found in Luke 1:37: “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” This verse is only seven words in length, but it contains so much truth.

First, “with God” is the qualifier for achieving impossibilities.

On his own, man faces impossibilities in spite of huge gains in technology, medical breakthroughs and increased scientific knowledge. However, when you seek God, incredible possibilities arise.

In John 4:23, Jesus said the Father seeks those who worship him in spirit and truth. When people reach out to him in worship, God responds with his loving presence.

We read in Acts 2:38-39 that ultimately, receiving the Spirit of God within your being is the fulfillment of divine design.

The realm of the impossible becomes possible through supernatural power. The miraculous is God’s domain.

His invitation is incredible in what it includes as stated in Jeremiah 33:3: “Call to me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”

Nothing is identified as being impossible. This is both a determination of God’s ability to accomplish great things and a statement of being, or that the existence of nothing is impossible with God. He created the universe out of nothing. God brought something into existence when there was nothing.

When the people he created failed to follow his commandments and then hid from his presence, God didn’t just do nothing.

The Bible contains the full story of redemption as God came in human form to purchase man’s salvation. His life on earth, blood on the cross, saving name and indwelling Spirit were all provided for the purpose of man living with eternal promise and hope of heaven.

You can have faith because you are trusting in the one who “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did,” Romans 4:17.

You can pray with expectation because God has promised to answer.

You can believe the Bible because, as it says in 1 Kings 8:56, every promise will be fulfilled and not one word has failed.

When we realize that nothing is impossible with God, we need to avoid foolish questions like, “Can God make a rock so big that even he couldn’t lift it?”

Instead, we choose to live in faith and bravely believe in God’s provision of salvation, to dare to dream of deliverance, to trust for victory in spiritual battles, and to pray for healing, strength and spiritual renewal.

We look to the one who can bring something out of nothing and accomplish the impossible in our lives as we obediently follow him.

Mitch Glover is the pastor of the Sterling United Pentecostal Church at Swanson River Road and Entrada. Sunday School is at 10 a.m., Sunday worship is at 11 a.m. and Bible study is on Thursdays at 7 p.m.